Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
...

Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

Don Berwick came by this week to meet with the editorial board. He’s one of five Democrats running for governor. Brian Benson has a report here.

Brief bio: Trained as a pediatrician, he has run a health policy research and consulting company in Cambridge. He was joined the Obama administration early, named director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services by Tom Daschle, then Kathleen Sibelius. He faced Republican opposition and, after Scott Brown gave the GOP the filibuster, the Democrats retreated.† Max Baucus – the Senate Finance Committee runs Medicare – wouldn’t even schedule a confirmation hearing.† In summer of 2010, Obama put him in the job as a recess appointment, and he left in December 2012 when the appointment expired.

Obamacare:† Berwick claims responsibility for implementing rules extending family coverage to age 26, requiring preventive care be covered, and other successful elements of the Affordable Care Act.† He takes no responsibility for decisions about overseeing the development of the healthcare.gov website, even though it was on his watch.† The procurement process is where the fundamental mistakes were made in the rollout, people who have investigated it say, starting with the critical decision to manage the project in-house instead of contracting with a private firm to pull the pieces together.† Berwick says it was a “staff decision” he had nothing to do with.

Elevator pitch: Berwick says 30 percent of what we spend on health care is wasted, and that by moving to a single payer system, administered through insurance companies, a bunch of that can be recovered and put toward other priorities like education and transportation.

My take:† He’s a smart, accomplished man, passionate for compassion, a Cambridge liberal – people should be able to smoke pot, but not play slots – who would push Massachusetts to take the next step in health reform.† Not for the first time, I found myself wondering why someone like this, a non-politician with a successful career and many attractive options, would want to take a year out of their lives to chat it up with would-be donors and town committee members from Pittsfield to Provincetown, stressing their families and draining their bank accounts for a long-shot bid for statewide office.

Don Berwick doesn’t have a household name, a fat campaign warchest or an excess of charisma.† But the state’s campaign system gives a candidate like him a shot.† He has spent months talking face-t0-face with the small universe of Democrats who select or become delegates to the state convention in June.† If he wins over enough of them to get 15 percent of the delegates in Worcester, he’ll have all summer to win over enough voters to overtake the better-known contenders, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Treasurer Steve Grossman, in the September primary.